I’ve seen alot of calls for violence in America. Whether it be directed at the president or Federal officers, many people are advocating for an escalation in response to the current situation.
And believe me, I do understand. what I see happening in America is horrifying. But all I am imploring is to really think about what your asking for. Because you can’t put the genie in the bottle once you’ve left it out.
If you’re really gung-ho about it, go and ask a Veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan about it and see what they think. If anyone will know about it they will.
I am going to link a YouTube Playlist. Its the Associated Press Archives of the Bosnian-Serbian war. Because THAT is what will happen if wide scale violence breaks out. Except what will happen in America will be a hundred times worse.
The Bosnian war was pretty much broken up along ethnic lines. “Well it’s going to be Conservative VS. Liberal” you say. Except it won’t be. It will be anyone having a grudge against someone going after them.
ALOT of personal animosity will be taken out in the first few weeks I feel.
And I think the Seige of Sarajavo will be writ large in American cities across the country. Imagine having to dodge sniper fire on your way to get to your job at Wendy’s.
Because that’s the other thing no one is thinking about. You are still going to have to make a living while this is all going to be happening. And the cost of everything will skyrocket. Shipping will probably have to be escorted from place to place because people will be stealing or even blockading locations because they’re “damn dirty libs” or “Fascist Conservatives” Fresh produce will become a thing of the past.
Canada and Mexico will close their borders due to all the refugee’s trying to cross. so if you thinking of doing it, do it the moment everything pops off because otherwise you won’t get in.
Basically Civil war is going to the worst thing to happen in America in a long time. and the only good that comes out of it will be Americans will finally have first hand experience of real war torn violence. And maybe that will hopefully last for another two hundred years or so.
If America even survives the outcome that is.
It’s going to be insurgency terrorism
the problem with a civil war is collapse of the supply chain for most people, and you’ll have to become useful to get protection
Americans are sadly locked into the path of violence as the other path will force them to face their systemic racism, and corporate idolization which is clearly not going to happen.
It took Nicole Good to be face shot before people really started to react despite 4 other similar events with non white females and I am constantly shocked how many Americans defend corporations that are literally exploiting them. America is cooked unfortunately as like most humans, myself included, we tend to become blind with power.
Renee Good was her name. Not Nicole. Sucks that attention was only given after a white LGBT woman was killed. Still sucks even more that she was killed. I am haunted by the pictures of her glove box. It was filled with stuffed animals for her child.
you could say they were either build up or outshined by Nicole shooting. plus she was protesting ice for deporting people to labor camps. its not “this one thing did it” its gradual
Not American, so feel free to stop reading.
It’s ridiculous to me how you yanks go from zero to a hundred like this. Either normality or civil war. Like there is no in between? You have an authoritarianism problem. So resist authoritarianism. What makes you think that the only way to resist is shooting people? Resistance is a spectrum, and you have barely started using democratic means to fight back (you just started electing democratic socialists), much less active procedural and institutional warfare (is Bernie demanding a vote for every procedural point requiring a vote? Are the Dems actually using any rat fucking tactic to make the state ungovernable? Are your local and state governments really resisting beyond making angry noises?). You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions. Wtf. Those come at the very end, if everything else has failed. Has it? Nowhere near. So this talk about civil war, is that really useful?
Whilst I agree, the problem lies with the individualism of the general population rather than the collective mindset. The backwards-ass government system (i.e. no opposition government, the bastardisation of the 3 branches etc. and the power hungry head-of-state vs a Parliamentary system for example), the extreme “state-first” mentality that then struggles when the Federal system comes down on it and the “divide and conquer” tactics of corporations with the support of successive right-leaning governments. A judicial system that corrupted by politics and trying to guess what a bunch of
guysslave-owning white landowners 250 years ago would have thought is also very very very very very very very dumb. The law is meant to be blind - it’s why the statue used to represent it wears a blindfold, holds a scale and a sword.The country is in need of a Civil Revolution rather than a civil war. Both sides are more similar than they realise, and generally want the same thing, and none seem to see the real enemy (CEOs, Billionaires etc.) due to all the propaganda.
The problem is that the steps between zero and a hundred are incremental rights which take decades to establish. If you are a non-American then you might have those steps already established, but currently the US does not. So once the status quo passes beyond the acceptable parameters the only possible solution is violence.
Another user I spoke with asked about collective rebellion, union strikes, and general resistance, but these don’t work if the infrastructure isn’t already in place. You can’t start a strike if you don’t have a union and your co-workers don’t agree, you can’t take up arms without at least a state level rebellion, most protests are effectively meaningless, and unless you are willing to give up everything (job, family, and well being) then you’ll never amount a significant resistance.
For the most part people want to live their lives with the least amount of fucking up they can. So long as the republican’s don’t fuck up their shit too much they will keep their heads down and vote in the elections.
Democrats and states both follow the same rules. They will try to counter the Republicans, but if that means a government shutdown with old people and the poor going without assistance then they are willing to cave. So far we aren’t at the point where any US group is willing to make real sacrifice to make a change, such as a fighting, going without, or causing their family to suffer.
You can’t start a strike if you don’t have a union and your co-workers don’t agree
This is a major point that those outside of the US seem to miss, I think. The sheer depth of contempt for unions and unionization I’ve experienced is a massive barrier to organizing any significant resistance. I’m very certain a majority of US citizens are unaware of what a general strike even looks like. Corporate propaganda has very successfully vilified and diminished unions for a long time.
On the one hand yes you are behind on some kinds of labour organizing.
On the other hand, it’s not that simple.
a) you have a very long history of minority organizing. Black Americans, Chicanos, indigenous people, and other minorities have survived for generations. It sounds like a leftie cliché, but you guys should really take leadership from them.
b) you don’t have the baggage that comes with entrenched left wing politics. There is a thing like too much left wing politicking. In Greece for example, land of spectacular antifa riots, the left is absolutely paralyzed and completely fragmented. Too much history, too many reasons to blame this or that left faction for what they did 10,20,30, sometimes 60 or more years ago. You have a chance to build on a green field.
c) one thing you Americans actually have going for you is that you guys actually believe in democracy. You’re true believers. It’s a thing we in the rest of the world have always kind of being weirded out by you that you want to be electing judges and sherrifs and school boards etc. And you actually have this libertarian steak in you that’s kind of interesting when it comes to resistance. You have so much democratic institutional hardware just lying around.
d) you actually are close to some of the powerful economic structures, institutions, and pop culture centres in the planet. Anything you do will and already does reverberate globally in ways that others don’t.
So, while you do have very big challenges you also have very big opportunities. And friends man, you have friends. I know we give you guys shit all the time, but trust me, when Americans rise up and stand up we all feel a bit taller. I’m telling you this as someone who listened to RATM on the way to weekly marches getting gassed by the police, thinking we were trying to be as cool as the WTO protests in Seattle.
I feel like what you are touching at is that liberals in the US, and Americans in general, are waiting for a touch stone. So far nothing has gone so far as to start the fire. On the other hand there has been no centralizing ember, someone to carry the torch.
Yes, the US has a long history of minority organizing, but minorities are one of the worst groups for turning out for elections (in fact minorities are more likely to turn out if they are voting for Republicans than they are for anyone else, a key element of being a conservative in the US is turning out to vote but liberals can’t seem to harness that energy).
The US doesn’t have the baggage as you mentioned, but the existence of the two party system carries a ton of baggage on it’s own and has effectively squashed most third party resistance.
Most American’s do believe in Democracy, but sadly one half is too stupid to know what it is and the other half only believes in it when it supports their ideas. The second group is one which would happily ban all abortions and then complain when a woman can’t get an abortion even though the pregnancy is killing her. My very own cousin is white trash poor with his children living on government assistance, but thinks we need to end welfare because the minorities are using it. These people are too stupid for governance.
To your final point, the US left needs a leader, a cult of personality to combat Trump, but there frankly isn’t anyone right now. So far no one high enough up in the social circle has been willing to stick their head out far enough to rally around.
I hate to say it, but the US is at the point where we need a life line. Just like the US coming in and occupying Germany to eliminate the Nazis, we now need an outside force to help fix our shit. Short of that the US needs another civil war, but I’m not so certain that it will go the way we want it.
The reasons you outlined are why you are in trouble. As in, if they weren’t the case you would be in trouble. It’s a bit of a circular tautology. But they are not things that doom you. They are the shape of the whole you’re in. And it’s on you guys to find a way out. There’s no way around that. And no, the world is not coming to save you: there is no cavalry.
I don’t think you guys are doomed. I think the opposite, that the American people are a sleeping giant that can shake the world. And no, I don’t think you need to jump straight to shooting reach other.
I think that’s all well and good unless you are wrong. From my perspective I think you are wrong, but maybe you aren’t. As things sit the people that are on your side think they are in trouble and want outside help, but you are saying “you’ll be fine.” The US has historically been the interventionist in the first world, but now they are in need of intervention. This has been the soul of the Republican argument for a long time, the US intervenes and the rest of the world does nothing. Now the Republican’s want to pull aid from allies and intervene (cough invade) only when it benefits them.
At the very least Europe needs to pick up the slack the US is dropping, even if they don’t go the extra mile to help fix the US. At the end of the day the US is steering towards needing foreign interventions, a civil war, or devolving into a totalitarian regime. Meanwhile the rest of the world is watching and wondering why we don’t just fix ourselves. I’ll tell you the sensible answer, I’m renewing my passport and making sure I have enough money for a last minute flight out of the country.
Well, take care. In the meantime, listen to the 20 lessons on tyranny.
And maybe binge watch this guy, I think he’s onto something.
Every single leftist could have resisted a lot of this using the internet to spread a message.
You’re absolutely right. Generations jave been indoctrinated to give up autonomy and control to the system. People have been socially and economically backed into a corner where they don’t feel like they can make any real change in their lives.
They know transcending class barriers is impossible (though they lie to themselves about it) and they don’t really believe that politics make a difference. People don’t vote. They scrabble at shit jobs and go into debt to feel richer.
Violence is the one form of power they’re truly clinging to. A gun is a surrogate for control. It’s power you can exert in your narrow sphere.
Most of this perception is wrong, but it’s a part of the culture. The idea that the only way this can get fixed is violent civil war is a game of chicken with the ruling class and they’re betting that people won’t actually rise up.
You have barely tried non violent resistance (not the same as peaceful!) but you’re such a violent culture that you jump straight to military solutions.
Most Americans are victims of a violent regime and not violent themselves. They’re scared and going through something most Canadians and many post-WWII Europeans will never have to deal with in their lifetimes. People are being murdered, and you’re telling the victims it’s their fault and that they’re violent for trying to prepare for a worst-case scenario.
Yes, of course there are other ways to confront this. Yes, I wish the country I was regrettably born in was culturally more like the EU and Canada. But it’s not that simple and I can’t help but feel that this comment is in poor taste.
You missed my point.
You missed mine. Until you find yourself the victim of an authoritarian state you live in starting a Holocaust, you don’t get to make blanket statements about an entire country that lumps the oppressors and the oppressed into the same category.
I’m not denying fear, violence, or victimhood. And I’m not equating oppressors with the oppressed. I should push back on the idea that naming cultural patterns equals blaming victims, or that only people inside the worst possible historical analogy are allowed to analyze trajectories.
I’m talking about how societies slide, not about who deserves what. Those are different conversations. I’ve been on the receiving end of state violence. I’ve marched, been gassed, watched movements radicalize too fast and burn themselves out. That’s exactly why I’m saying this: jumping straight to existential framing and armed horizons doesn’t protect anyone it only narrows the future until only catastrophe is left.
You don’t need to already be in a Holocaust to talk about escalation dynamics. In fact, if you wait until everything is unspeakable, analysis is already useless. Yes, fear is justified and preparation is understandable and necessary. But when fear becomes immune to critique, it stops being a warning signal and starts being a steering wheel.
My point hasn’t changed: there is still space, Real Political Space, for non-violent (not peaceful!) resistance, that can be powerfully disruptive. Once that space collapses, it doesn’t reopen because people were right about how bad things felt. I’m arguing against that collapse, not minimizing what’s at stake.
Americans can not comprehend a gunless solution without pizza in the end
It very much seems like a setup to try and agitate the left into their own Jan 6th.
If the Dems don’t sweep midterms and get majority after the shitshow that’s been this administration, they just might get it.
Then it’ll be dismissed because of Jan 6th.
I’ve been using Sarajevo as an example for a while. People will be getting shot by snipers just for trying to find food or water.
They get shot just for going to school. Or being brown.
Quantity has a quality all its own.
I always heard that quote attributed to Joseph Stalin, re the T-34 vs the German Panzer. I’m not one of the two worst men in history, so a pissing match between the worst man in history and the second worst man in history does not impress me, a better human than both. My name isn’t in a single social studies textbook printed anywhere on earth. Get on my level, noobs.
I know I specified “mass murder,” I don’t think I’ve directly killed anyone, if I have killed anyone it was aviation maintenance related, and I haven’t been interviewed by the NTSB yet, so I take that as a good sign. Does the United States of America still have a National Transportation Safety Bureau? Transportation Safety seems to be the kind of thing a functioning society would want. I remember being a member of a functioning society. Good times.
The only regulation I ever intentionally broke was FAR 91.407(a). I followed the manufacturers instructions to. the. letter. I didn’t like how the rivets looked, they weren’t like the ones I removed. I took that plane up and put it through every maneuver its operating limitations allowed, I pulled on it as hard as a pilot was legally allowed, because if my rivet gun was going to kill anyone, it was going to be me. I landed, signed the airframe logbook and called the customer to pick the plane up. That was the day I met myself. I learned what kind of man I was that day. Every woman I’ve slept with since I replaced that wing strut mount has woken me up from a nightmare about it. I still fantasize about buying that airplane so I can spend 5 hours chainsawing it into 3 pound pieces. I don’t fly, or fix airplanes anymore.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, bourbon.
YSK: The average citizen doesn’t have much control over the cork in the bottle.
This administration is repeatedly and consistently provoking people. Randomly shooting people in the face, and talking about sending the military to Minnesota is going to cause things to boil over if the other people we elected don’t step in and force them to cool down.
Everybody know it not a game but st some point there is no othet options and fight oppresion
… Americans don’t realize they’re already in a civil war? Bro a city is occupied. Secret police roam freely. Tens of thousands disappeared.
That’s not what a civil war is by definition
hit me up from the gulag when it meets your definitions, champ
You know you can still make your point but use the correct terminology
That isn’t a civil war. That is an autocracy. If the people across the state were coming in a militia to take over that would be a civil war.
Like say the marines being deployed to a us city
Where do you think the ICE agents are drawn from, buddy? Downtown St. Paul? Pedantic.
That isn’t a civil war though. It isn’t “pedantic” you just don’t know the definition of a civil war.
The definition you are talking about can’t happen anymore.
You can’t have a states vs states civil because it’s house vs house now. This is the modern world it isn’t like the past. This isn’t “farms in the south have slaves so we fight the south.”
It’ll be more “I always hated Paul from next doors view on immigration and now the day we go kill him” except every house. Nationwide.
So I get what your saying but I feel it’s you who should reconsider definitions
Webster is my favorite
Pedantic: disapproving relating to, or being a pendant (as in being overly concerned with minor details) overly scholarly.
Edit I should add I doo agree with you this is currently not that yet, but it won’t look like what you are describing either
It doesn’t mean your stupid it means the detail your hung up on is minor one and it’s not in the definition of a civil war: a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country. It says nothing about regions or travel. It brother fighting brother. That’s a civil war.
I should add that I do agree with you this is currently not a civil war. It’s state employees vs citizens. But if a civil war comes it won’t be California marching into Texas. People will be attacking their neighbors.
Person calling someone else a pendant breaks out the dictionary definition of “pedantic” as the opening salvo of a multi paragraph hair splitting rant. This is the internet I signed up for.
You forgot the part where I specifically say I have a favorite dictionary and my multiple grammar mistakes. Lol
The only true segregation is wealth based, the last civil war had astoundingly clearly delineated lines and you still had brother killing brother. Modern war isn’t like that. It’s city by city with things totally calm 30 miles over. Moving like a cloud of death from community to community. Old grudges, family issues, bad neighbors, bad bosses, anything will get you killed.
Not a world i want to be in, no guarantee what this place looks like after, there isn’t a good guys win scenario, we’re in an oligarchy. Maybe it’s that shit Marx talked about, but i bet it’s Gilead.
Robert Evan’s has a great podcast about what a civil war might look like that he wrote before trump even got elected the first time I think. And boy does it hold up still.
Things he says like “the crumbles”
And how he talks about “ but today… you’ve got shit to do” talking about things just crumbling around you but you still got to go to the grocery store before the line forms. Or how “you’re alarmed you recognize how far away a mortar hit from now, and you know that one wasn’t a threat, then the second one hits to kill the survivors.
It’s not all read in the second person only intro but the rests goes on about how other countries experience civil wars and compares it .
Anyway it’s really good and quite terrifying.
They are moving 1500 soldiers to Minneapolis to quell the “violence” which is basically people marching with signs and blocking traffic.
Ice agents are threatening to murder people and telling them they should have learned to be meek so they don’t get murdered like Goode
I’ve yet to see a major media outlet call it what it is.
It’s sheer cowardice at this point. The president himself has called it war.
There’s no armed fighting back, so it’s not a civil war it’s purging.
It may not have actually escalated into shooting yet, but the armed defense is certainly beginning.
Have a non Instagram link?
Which city? I’ve been keeping an eye on her news and I still feel like I miss shit
Chicago. LA. Minneapolis. And more, but those are currently the most egregious.
One thing you saw in places like Syria and the Balkans was a lot of revenge murders and groups that were essentially gangs terrorizing and enslaving towns.
I remember reading how people in the old Yugoslavia talked about how people they’d lived next to for generations suddenly turned on them. The same in Rwanda where groups were slaughtered en masse. People were packed into churches and the buildings set on fire, etc.
I’m not really expecting a “civil war” for the many reasons stated by others.
I’m more expecting total societal collapse combined with extremely violent capitalist repression - largely due to the ongoing destruction of the planet. Basically a continuation of what’s been happening for centuries.
We’re in a civil war right now. This is what it looks like.
But it can get a lot worse.
Conservatives really do think that any limitation of freedom imposed to their political opponents only affects them. How cute!
I’ve called this out too, and somebody called my comment “gamerslop bullshit” just because I had one sentence that pointed out that real war isn’t like call of duty.
The person who commented that didn’t realize the irony that the “gamerslop bullshit” implicit in the warmongering/romanticization of violence is precisely what I was calling out.
People these days will accuse you of anything you criticize them for. Like, you pointed it out so clearly you’re the one doing it. It’s so illogical.
People in the US have been protected from the reality of war since the civil war in the 1860s. Even vets (a very small minority) of real wars get to come home at the end of it. The reality would be more like Vietnam or Syria were the war is your home and there is no escape. It is like the war against vaccines, people have forgotten the reality of life with those diseases and take the return of them very lightly.
Yeah, someone who’s witnessed the devastation of war might say “You don’t want that, you really don’t understand what you’re calling for” and someone who’s never seen combat outside of video games and movies would say something like “You might be a coward, but I’m not.”
Like, dude, until those first bullets fly over your head, you don’t know how you’re going to react. When you’re getting shelled, and explosions are happening so close the shock wave alone can give you a concussion, when fighter jets and bombers fly overhead and all you can do is wonder whether you’ll still be alive and intact five minutes from now, when communications and supply chains break down, food is scarce, clean water hard to come by, when the power grid goes down and you have to weather extreme temperatures in the summer and winter, when chaos reigns and you have to wonder every time you see a person whether they’re gonna try to kill you, when you have to ration supplies so you don’t run out, and have to avoid patrols of armored vehicles and evade detection 24/7 or risk getting bombed by drones, and when there’s no end in sight but the slog goes on and on and on, night and day, without relenting, and you have to wonder how much longer you’ll have to go on like this, how much longer you can go on like this, when every day when the sun rises you don’t know if you’ll be alive to see it set, and every night when the sun sets you don’t know if you’ll be alive to see it rise, if you’ve been through all that hell on earth and haven’t shit your pants, and still think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff to avoid having to vote for an imperfect candidate, then sure, maybe you have room to talk.
In real war, you can’t power down when you’re done playing. And if you have people you care about, then multiply hell by a thousand, because chances are you won’t be able to keep in contact and you’ll have to wonder every minute of every day whether they’re having it any better or worse than you are, while you’re utterly helpless to protect them because all you can do is fight to keep yourself alive another day.
Nobody is calling out for civil war. If it start it is because of Ice . People have the right to self defence when they got attacked by those thugs. The same eyewitness who say he didn’t want a war would tell you that he do not regret fighting against oppression
Yeah, some people definitely are, especially on the internet.
Sure, people have a right to stand their ground. That right might not be recognized by the legal system, but some rights go beyond the ability of mortal men to give or take away.
That doesn’t change the fact that if they outnumber you, then you might (if you’re both skilled and lucky) take one out with you before the rest of them blast you.
If they’re going to blast you anyway then you have nothing to lose, but for most people it seems like the best possible outcome would be to avoid escalating as much as possible.
Ice is like the gestspo though
And do you know what it took to stop the Gestapo?
I’ll give you a hint, it was more than just a ragtag group of German rebels with guns refusing to comply.
There was people in germany who fought the gestapo, they didn’t wait to be saved by the allies thst wouldn’t helped them if Hitler didn’t declare war on them
Nobody is calling out for civil war
Elements of the Right have spent years calling for a civil war, what rock have you been living under?
Nobody is calling out for civil war.
Yes, some are. I have seen it a few times online, but people tend ti talk big on the internet. What really scared me was when I heard it in person.
I live in a pretty conservative area and I was at a bar the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated and some woman said, and I quote, “The liberals don’t realize that this means war. They’re not ready, but I am. Send me to the frontlines!” Her friend asked, “You mean you want a civil war?” And she answered, “Yes. They fired the first shot. It’s on now.”
“They fired the first shot”
*Looks at Vance Boelter
I doubt an unhinged conservative even knows who that is.
Because it was glossed over in conservative and mainstream media. They acted all shocked about Charlie Kirk, but they had never even heard of Melissa Hortman. Even the ones who knew of the incident pretended it didn’t exist.
They’re not in touch with reality.
Even worse would be the terror groups like in Syria and Vietnam where they come into a town after the enemy has left and slaughter anyone they think did or could collaborate. They would also take all the food they could leaving populations to starve.
And yet anarchists believe they hold the keys to a utopian future…
“Just read theory, you just don’t understand. Humans will take care of each other, just trust me.”
Well that’s a strange segue.
I also seem to recall plenty of effective anarchist defense groups in the various civil wars.
Aren’t there a bunch of anarchist communities in Syria right now?
Most of the voices calling for v10l3nt r3v01ut10n in the states are Russian bots or MAGA provocateurs.
